Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday November 24, 2008 @11:08AM
from the what-did-you-do-this-weekend dept.

the_other_chewey writes "At their test facility in Texas, SpaceX, the privately funded space-flight company, have successfully tested their nine-engine cluster which is planned to provide the heavy lifting capability for their Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy rockets.
The firing lasted three minutes (a full 'mission duty cycle,' i.e. a simulated launch) under full power, delivering 3.8MN (or 855,000 lbs.) of thrust. SpaceX have made a video of the test available. The Waco Tribune has a short report about it, with comments by locals."

I'm looking forward to the launch. Anyone know when that is? I've heard everything from January to March from several people.
Anywho,let's hope that SpaceX succeeds. Otherwise we'll end up depending on Russia from 2010 to 2015 for our man-capable launch systems with all the political consequences that entails.

Unless NASA releases money for COTS-D very soon, we will still have a manned launch gap. The Falcon 9 and Dragon are man rated, but to launch people into using the Falcon 9 and Dragon, you need much more. You need a Launch Escape System and a Emergency Egress System. Neither of these is currently in development at SpaceX and both have a long lead time to develop.

Without the additional COTS-D money to start development on these systems, SpaceX will not carry people until they find the money from other sources to fund these development efforts.

This test was the last major step before shipping it to the cape, so it seems the schedule on the website with delivery scheduled by Q408 is accurate. As far as when it launches... my WAG is by summer. From what I can tell getting it to the cape is largely a move to show the new administration "hey, remember us and COTS", so there may be a bit more work that has to be done on it.

Here's hoping the lessons from F1 carry over and there aren't new issues to discover.

SpaceX pwns Slashdot - there is cultural convergence involved since Elon founded PayPal and is young and geeky. On top of that he is the furthest along in fielding crew-capable private orbital spacelift. Much further than Virgin/Scaled, BlueOrigin or others. In some ways, SpaceX is further toward native crew-launch than Lockheed, Boeing or United Space Alliance (Post-Shuttle) - mostly because Dragon and Falcon 9 are coming along much faster than Orion/Constellation on much, much less money.

Lately some staff at SpaceX, formerly employed at NASA, were overheard saying "... who is complaining that rocket scientists are dealing with volatile stuff now". "Surely that 700 billion rescue package rips a hole large enough to fit 5 shuttle programs through, disasters included, and lets see whether the market has some engine restart capability" a colleague added.

Some soon to be space entrepreneur remarked in the past that "Derivatives are like Hydrazine, carrying dangers that, while latent when properly

The old Rocketdyne [wikipedia.org] engine test center was located a few miles outside my home town many, many years ago. The old timers said that the noise was ungodly when they tested their engines. Among the many things they would complain about in this rural area, was that the cows would become so upset, they wouldn't give milk.

When I was a college student back in the early 80's my friends and I used to love to take my jeep out to explore the "ruins" of the old test center. Most impressive were the deflectors (don't know what else to call them) that shunted the rocket blast 90 degrees to vertical. They were enormous. I have no doubt that the locals weren't exaggerating too much when they described the noise and vibration from the engine tests.

The noise from a large missile motor is incredible. I have worked at a test site in a previous life and it is something you never forget. So, yes, I'm not surprised that the cows got upset - I am surprised that they didn't stampede and broke through the fences.

"I live in Valley Mills, just taking the last steak off the grill. Space-X shook the T-Bone off the grill hit my dog on the head, he thought I smacked him, he bit my ankle. My wife just getting into our water bed shook up a huge wave, threw her out of bed. She blamed it all on me. Milk in frig.is now butter-milk, the cats,will not leave the kitchen. My son couldnâ(TM)t hear his stereo, cranked it up, blew the windows out of the neighbors house. Guess Iâ(TM)ll be replacing them on Sunday. It was a great light show!"

Dear Greater Waco Area Residents,
We appreciate your feedback regarding our recent test as it allows us to improve our notification process to the surrounding community.
Since we began operations in 2003, SpaceX has conducted over 2000 tests, and nearly ten have been multiple engine tests at similar times of day. During these previous tests, we did not receive complaints from citizens in your area. The weather on November 22, with low clouds and cool temperatures, drastically affected the distance the sound and light travelled. We began test procedures for this particular test at 7:00am on Friday, Nov. 21 and executed it as quickly as possible, working through hundreds of pages of procedures designed to keep the community, staff, and hardware safe. While no further tests are planned for this stage in McGregor, in the future we will increase our notification to include local news media and law enforcement in McLennan, Coryell, Bell, and Falls counties.
As a resident of Central Texas for over 25 years, with family in the area, it is extremely important to me, as well as all of SpaceX, who choose to raise their families in the area, that our testing is safe for local residents. The propellants used are non-toxic and environmentally friendly, In factâ"the Falcon 9 burns a higher grade of kerosene (more environmentally friendly) than a 747 and burns only about half of what a single 747 flight does. The smoke you may have seen was composed mostly of steam and dust.
SpaceX strives to be a good corporate neighbor, bring high technology jobs to the area, and stimulate the local economy. We are proud to have operations in McGregor and make use of facilities which have historically played such an important role in American history. Engines which propelled American astronauts to the moon and back were developed and tested here, as well as the Sidewinder and Phoenix missiles.
The launch vehicle engines tested last night will soon take cargo, and eventually crew, to the International Space Station. Falcon 9 represents the only medium to heavy lift rocket that is 100 percent Made in America and with this vehicleâ"SpaceX will bring leadership in launch back to the US. The leadership role is currently held by former Soviet Republics, France, and China.
http://www.wacotrib.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/communities/breakingnews/entries/2008/11/23/spacex_issues_statement_on_con.html [wacotrib.com]

I'm not a physicist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it has something to do with those heavy steel/concrete ties seen in the video. If you can provide more than 35 meganewtons of restraint, the rocket isn't going to go anywhere.

(Not to say that such logic is bleeding obvious./sarcasm)

Now for a real bit of discussion: Does anyone know how tall that test stand is. The thing appears to be HUGE! To the left of the stand you can see what appears to be power lines. An off-the-cuff approximation would suggest that the stand is 6 times taller than the lines. If we take a wild guess at the height of the lines (say, 15 feet?), we can guesstimate that the stand could easily be 90 feet or more in height!

That's impressive for a company who's only launch to date was an oversize firecracker in comparison to the rockets flown by their competitors. I honestly hope that what they learned with the Falcon 1 speeds development of the Falcon 9. A price war in the rocket industry would be awesome for long-term space access.

The Falcon 9 first stage on top of the stand is about 25 m high (I've assumed it's half the total height of the Falcon 9). The stand appears a bit over 2x as high as that first stage, so 60 m/180 ft would be my initial guess.

The website says the top of the BFTS ("Big Falcon Test Stand") is 235 feet high. Presumably this includes the blue "Stairway to Heaven" running up the side of the first stage, so I'd say the concrete stand is probably about 150 feet... having been up to the top I must say it's impressive, and a little scary. Fortunately theres an elevator up to the concrete platform, but only too steep stairs up to the top from there.

Also, while I love the company, I woudl say that they did just buy the site, including the test stand from another company that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head.

The website says the top of the BFTS ("Big Falcon Test Stand") is 235 feet high.... Also, while I love the company, I woudl say that they did just buy the site, including the test stand from another company that I can't remember the name of off the top of my head.

The test stand originally belonged to Beal Aerospace [wikipedia.org] a private spaceflight startup which went defunct back in the dot-com days.

One thing that's pretty cool is that SpaceX is also developing a rocket (the "BFR") that will be too big for the BFTS. Also, I think one can assume from the names that Elon Musk is probably a Doom fan.

The development of Merlin 2 begs the question: what is SpaceX planning that requires such a powerful engine? In past talks Musk has hinted at the development of something called the "BFR" (where B stands for "big" and R for "rocket"), a heavy-lift vehicle far larger than the Falcon family of vehicles. At SpaceVision2005 Musk disclosed that the BFR, in its current iteration, would use "multiple" Merlin 2 engines. The BFR would be able to place 100 tons in low Earth orbit, putting it in competition with NASA's planned shuttle-derived heavy-lift launcher. The BFR is so big, Musk said, that it's too large for the BFTS at their Texas test site: even if they beefed up the stand, he said, the overpressure from the engine tests would break windows in a nearby town. Musk said they would have to test the vehicle either at the launch site or, perhaps, at NASAâ(TM)s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

I work for the TX facility.
The concrete tripod is 120' tall and the legs are 10' in diameter. The stage is 85' tall and 12' in diameter.
You can see it 25 miles away when you are driving to work. It is pretty awesome (-;

My post was more of an attempt to entertainment (I love the linked clip from Spinal Tap), but if you want to analyze it...So, I am a physicist and possibly an engineer (I put "possibly" since some people don't accept the term "software engineers") and I never had a problem dealing with different systems of measurement. However, I think it is blatantly obvious that all systems of measurements were not created equal. Or, if they were created equal, the decimal ones are more equal than the others;)I have live

Don't forget that a pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold, and that if you were to take your ruler and measure from one mile marker to another, you wouldn't get exactly 63360 inches. Precious metals and gems are measured in troy ounces and pounds, whereas common objects like featers are measured in avoirdupois ounces and pounds. Mile markers are established using survey feet and inches which are longer than the customary units of the same name.

I work for the TX facility. The concrete tripod is 120' tall and the legs are 10' in diameter. The stage is 85' tall and 12' in diameter. You can see it 25 miles away when you are driving to work. It is pretty awesome (-;

For those of us who don't live in backward countries like Myanmar and Liberia...

I work for the TX facility. The concrete tripod is 36.6m tall and the legs are 3m in diameter. The stage is 26m tall and 3.6m in diameter. You can see it 45km away when you are driving to work. It is pretty

If I may ask a tangential question, how do you like working for SpaceX out at the test facility? I've been considering applying for one of the test engineer positions out there. Really, the main thing keeping me from doing so is the fact that it's way out in Texas (not because of the usual Texas cliches, but just because I like the Pacific NW too much). Anyway, how are the hours? Any major gripes? What sort of work do you do and what kind of background did you come from?

I started working for SpaceX straight out of college 1.5 years ago with a bachelors in electrical engineering (that is metric years, not US years). I am the principal programmer for the TX test software. Since the company is still small, you typically get very important projects from the day you start (F9 was my first project). The hours can be very long (50 hour week min), but the satisfaction you get from success makes it all worth it. Living in central TX is great! Houses are cheap, there is no traffic,

850,000lbf (lbf = pounds force) is a relatively small load. It is easy to forget exactly how strong steel is in tension: using standard 50ksi steel (typical structural steel), only about 18 sq-in would be required to hold the rocket down (albeit with no factor of safety).

For comparison, the main cables in the George Washington suspension bridge in New York each carry ~260,000,000lbf [jhu.edu], and are designed to resist almost 3 times that load. While the amount of thrust developed by the Falcon 9 is seriously impressive for a lift vehicle, it is trivial from a ground-based engineering standpoint.

There is a reason structural engineers work in kips not pounds (1 kip = 1000lb), and yes IAASE.

The test stand is 250 ft. high. I took a tour of the facility and got to ride an elevator up to the top.

It is an amazingly cool place. The Mission Control room is nerd heaven. Sprawling high-def monitors, scrolling reams of data, glowing diagrams and the comforting sound of a thousand different electronic devices humming beeping. [sigh]

Awesome, simply awesome. Glad to see they passed the test, or at least didn't blow up. Hope they got some good test data. Ideally they were giving it some control feedback to make sure the gimbals etc that aim the rocket were all responding correctly, performing their orbital roll etc. Getting the most bang for the buck (without the bang!) since I'm sure this test cost a not-so-small fortune considering the fuel used.

As for the "why didn't it take off" question, it was pretty firmly fitted to the ground. Despite it's size and total impulse capacity, that's over a 3 minute span. It's not designed to lift more than itself and its payload, at a marginal acceleration. The thrust output is variable also, and can't be allowed to crush the payload with G-forces. Despite its massive size, it wasn't going to be going anywhere.

I'd be interested to know the power curve on the rocket. Most of the fuel is actually spent lifting the FUEL. From one viewpoint, the engine could be constant-thrust, and would accelerate slowly at first, and increase its acceleration as it consumed fuel and became lighter with the same thrust. Or it could back off the thrust as it got lighter, to prevent the g-forces from acceleration from becoming too great for the vehicle or its payload. I'm sure the power-to-weight-ratio could get really high as it nears the end of its firing if it were left at maximum thrust. Anyone happen to know the power curve or acceleration curve on ascent? I thought I read somewhere they try to keep the g-forces under 8g, and not for too long of a period of time, at least for crew.

There are nine engines in a cluster. Burn time for the cluster is 178 seconds. All engines run at full throttle. At t+160s, they shut down a pair of engines to reduce the g loading slightly, but otherwise it's constant thrust. Remember, though, that liftoff acceleration is very mild -- about 1.2g, iirc. For a given engine thrust, you usually improve payload mass by adding tankage until it can just barely leave the pad.

The things that worried me though are (1) the lightening of the load as the fuel is consumed, and (2) the thinning of the atmosphere as the rocket ascends. Both of these things are going to increase acceleration if thrust remains constant.

Although it starts at 1.2g, (with 1.0g being standard eath gravity pull) it has to be rising constantly except where those two engines cut out. I just have no idea how fast it rises.

I wouldn't be even a little surprised if acceleration goes over 5g just before throttle-d

The data sheet [spacex.com] says max axial load at MECO is 5g, and at SECO 3-5g depending on mission. They specify a design load factor of 6g.

If you want the slopes of the curves, you can work out estimates from published data. Takeoff mass is 333,400kg. Vacuum thrust is 5.56MN; multiplying by the Isp ratio, that suggests a liftoff thrust of 5.03MN, or about 1.5g at liftoff (seems I misremembered).

Liftoff Isp of 275s equates to 2700m/s, so to produce 5.03MN thrust it burns 1860 kg/s of propellant. That'll give you t

That's another thing that's puzzled me a little with my inadequate knowledge of rocketry... (I am not a rocket scientist!) In space, yes you have no wind resistance or drag on the side of the vehicle, or underpressure vacuum on the bottom so by that I'd expect it to "perform better". (more acceleration for a given thrust) but there's no air behind you to "push off from". How do those two factors compare?

What makes you think it didn't go anywhere? The thrust was diverted 90deg, so for 3 minutes it was exerting roughly 36 trillion lb/ft of torque on the planet. I don't know which way the diverter is aligned, so I can't tell you whether the conspiracy is to accelerate the Earth's rotation, decelerate it, or cause it to rotate sideways (that one would really suck).

Well you see Jimmy, scientists have big brains, so all they had to do was have a really smart one stand on it and weigh it down. This is also why they need such big rockets, to get scientists big brains up to space.

I'm sure you've never had that problem and could reach orbit in a light breeze.

Well, if you had read some of the comments, many of them already are complaining.

"What kind of toxins are we being exposed too!!!11!"

Yeah.. I much prefer this comment: "By Jermiah
November 23, 2008 12:24 AM | Link to this
I quite enjoyed it. Nothing like a glass a scotch a lawn chair a cigar and 1.5 million foot pounds of pressure to make someone feel alive."

Burned kerosene. If that bothers our poor environmentalist friends, then they might want to start a protest against Kerosene Lamps [wikipedia.org], portable stoves, home heating (primarily Japan, UK, and Ireland), and jet engines.

Which reminds me. Greenpeace has released a commercial [gametrailers.com] decrying the toxicity of game consoles. It "stars" Mario, Master Chief, and Kratos. Trademarks for which they obviously don't have the rights. (Evidenced by the awful voice acting.) Worse yet

Circuit boards in general are made with toxic processes and often contain toxic chemicals in trace amounts.

I'm pretty sure the recycling of game console boards is just as bad as computers, meaning that it is a problem, but nowhere near as many game console boards are sold as PC motherboards making the issue barely worth discussing (about 70 million PCs were sold in the US in 2007, not including servers and laptops whereas just a few million game consoles were sold).

Circuit boards in general are made with toxic processes and often contain toxic chemicals in trace amounts.

I'm pretty sure the recycling of game console boards is just as bad as computers, meaning that it is a problem, but nowhere near as many game console boards are sold as PC motherboards making the issue barely worth discussing (about 70 million PCs were sold in the US in 2007, not including servers and laptops whereas just a few million game consoles were sold).

Actually, its 1000 times worse, due to the concentration of burning parts around "recycling" centers.

Check out this 60 minutes segment from two weeks ago. It's hard to watch in places, watching 4 year old kids playing in old capacitors and lead solder.

Which reminds me. Greenpeace has released a commercial decrying the toxicity of game consoles. It "stars" Mario, Master Chief, and Kratos. Trademarks for which they obviously don't have the rights. (Evidenced by the awful voice acting.) Worse yet, their claims are entirely specious, making bizarre and untrue claims about toxicity and lack of recycling. Hilarious in how bad it is, though.

The Greenpeace commercial is protected by that 'fair use' thingy that the EFF is always going on about. Specifically, th

I am so angry at SpaceX! My children and I were very scared. How dare them conduct this test without letting us know! We live across from the McGregor Airport and our entire house shook and trembled. The sky was on fire. My 11-year-old son said he âoethought the sun was exploding.â I grabbed a jug of apple juice and made my kids go into my closet fearing the worse.

So, when you fear for the worse, you go into your closet with a jug of apple juice? "One apple a day keeps the doomsday away."

My wife and I saw the new Indiana Jones movie on DVD this past weekend. We both rolled our eyes at that part (as well as other parts). You kind of expect fantastic feats with Indiana Jones, but that stretches the boundaries even for the series.

Is it wrong that part of me saw that scene and thought "The Mythbusters should do a Movie Myths episode featuring surviving a nuclear blast in a lead lined refrigerator." (Searching the Discovery.com forums and seeing the countless other posts on the subject.... I

You realize most of the Hiroshima survivors weren't even inside refrigerators, right? Just curious why that scene seems so unbelievable to so many people. There are people around today who were close enough to the blast that it destroyed the building they were in. They had to be dug out of the rubble of the building that collapsed around them. But they're still alive and kicking in 2008. Unless you're literally at ground zero, surviving a nuclear blast, particular the old A-bombs, really was pretty muc

Nuclear weapons are not nearly as "unsurvivable" as many people apparently believe. You might be interested to know that about 7% of the people at Hiroshima who were within 1000 feet of the blast site survived. I'm sure Indy has beaten worse odds before:)

Perhaps, but he climbed into a fridge which got blown high into the sky by a nuclear blast and landed far away (far enough to be outside of town). He then climbed out of the fridge with no visible radiation burns and no broken bones. He didn't even have any apparent bruising at all from the waist up (as evidenced by the next scene in the "radiation wash down room"). The whole thing just seemed a little extreme, even for Indiana Jones.

You just know when there are "comments by locals" there's going to be a riot of fun:

Yeah SpaceX couldve let the news media know they were conducting a test. Out here in Hewitt we thought it was an earthquake. Things were shaking and I rounded up my family thinking what the hell is going on.

Try to build a gun that big and you'll be shot by Mossad. Or possibly by the Iranians. Or the Iraqis. Or the CIA. Or MI6. Or the KGB. Nobody's quite certain. You don't make a lot of friends in that line of work.

It's fun to pick on Texans for things like cowboy hats, unnecessarily large barbeque pits, and their slow drawl, and it's easy to pick on people who didn't know what was going on when you're reading a news article after the fact that starts out by telling you exactly what went on, but "fearful idiots" is a remarkably stupid generalization.

How do you think residents would respond in your area? "The house is rattling, there's a tremendous roaring sound, I can feel reverberations through my body, and there's a bright glow on the horizon...meh, my WoW character is about to level up. I'll worry about it later." Somehow I'm guessing not.

Supposing they tested this near New York, or better yet Boston (The Mooninites are coming! The Mooninites are coming!)? There'd be hysteria in the streets. Heck, in some places you'd probably even get looting and throngs fleeing the city. The same goes for pretty much any place in the entire US, with the likely exception of Cape Canaveral, where rocket launches happen relatively frequently.

Things like this are genuinely bewildering when you don't know what's going on. About 10 years ago I saw a natural gas pipeline fire...from 50 miles away. The whole family was out on the back porch staring at the eerily pulsating glow of the reflection off the clouds trying to figure out what was going on. Until the local news reported on what was actually happening, our best guess was a forest fire, but a nuclear bombing of Portland was another speculation (we figured it unlikely, however, partially because there was no similar glow to the north, in the direction of Seattle). Coincidentally, they said the flames from that fire were as much as 200 feet high, so it was probably similar in brightness to the SpaceX test, but not nearly as loud.

A final more general comment: SpaceX has been conducting engine tests out there for several years now. In fact, their first Falcon 9 firing (1 engine at that time) on that test stand was almost a year ago, and their first nine-engine, short duration fire was three months ago. In view of this, SpaceX's statement that the sound carried much further than in the past due to the weather is probably quite accurate. It also probably didn't help that they did the test at 10:30 PM. Perhaps in the future they'll work safe stopping points into their procedure so they can delay to the next day if the test preparations take too long.

They probably also should consider putting up simple walls to reflect some of the sound upward and reduce the complaints long term. At the very least, have a facility-wide arbor day celebration and go plant lines of trees along the edge of the test site. I know our local racetrack was able to reduce neighborhood complaints (and make the treehuggers a little happier) by doing this.

A ground based rocket launch of that magnitude could easily be confused with a nuclear detonation given the sound, vibration, and light. I'm sure given your democrat proclivities, the same ones that drew you to San Fransisco, you're much more likely to believe something like that is just a civil rights riot. The rest of the world, however, isn't quite so naive. Be careful, otherwise your bigotry could begin to overshadow your incredible sense of self-satisfaction.

I hate how shit like this gets modded "insightful," if anything it's flamebait. What happened, did you see the one idiot the local news crew always seems to find that says "I'm not voting for Obama because he's a Muslim" and decide that an entire state is worthless? That's what the local news in (Dayton,Ohio) would show. They'd air some toothless person from the OH/WV boarder saying they wouldn't vote for Obama.. trying to generalize everyone who voted for McCain.

It's annoying that on a site with so many smart people that moronic generalizations can be seen as insightful. You know, not everyone who voted for McCain is a racist, or is a bible thumper, or is a fear and/or war mongerer. Some places actually do better under Republican policies (small towns). I didn't vote for McCain, but I don't bash the people who do. They have the right to vote for whomever they want for whatever reason they want.

Sorry. Falcon 9 is just another member of a rather crowded ~20t launchers, so no lunar capability beyond what we have now. I can see it being a commercial flop myself, because it doesn't have tremendous price advantages over much more proven launchers such as Proton and Ariane 5.

If its similarly priced and has the advantage of being American made, I think it has a shot, both in the sense of buy-American-ism and practical avoidance of ITAR issues... plus presumably prices will go down in time once they get the kinks out and a full production process going. In theory.

Like I said, one reason is some people, particularly the government, prefer to buy domestic products when possible. The second thing is that ITAR restrictions make it easier to work with a US company without having to post armed guards and other nonsense (look up Bigelow's Aluminum Coffee Table). And while that may not be enough to make it a fantastic success at first, it should be enough to get it proven, at which point it will get more popular.

Unfortunately, due to some poor decisions by current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, NASA's present lunar architecture is pretty much deliberately designed so that it can't take advantage of low-cost vehicles like SpaceX's. Instead, NASA has to use the Ares I and Ares V vehicles it's developing, which are continuously slipping in schedule and (in the case of the Ares I) have some fundamental design problems which may prevent them from flying at all.